More Testing For Mercedes-Benz eActros

The fully-electric Mercedes-Benz eActros are now being tested by the German food logistics specialist Nagel-Group in Hamburg. The vehicle will round off the Mercedes-Benz Trucks eActros “Innovation Fleet” for testing the heavy-duty electric truck.

The first eActros have been taking part in customer testing since September 2018. The eActros in use by Nagel-Group is the tenth vehicle in the fleet. The aim is to be able to realize distribution in urban areas from 2021 using heavy-duty series-production trucks. The official hand-over of the eActros took place in the Hans-Duncker-Street at the Nagel-Group branch in south-east Hamburg.

The 18 tonne truck with a range of up to 200 km supplies refrigerated foodstuffs to customers such as supermarkets in central Hamburg. As a fully-electric, the eActros can also drive in zones subject to bans on diesel vehicles. After the daily round, the batteries are charged directly at the company’s depot overnight.

Tobias Jardon, head of the Nagel-Group Hamburg branch: “Hamburg provides the ideal urban surroundings for testing a fully electric truck. The Mercedes-Benz eActros will deliver refrigerated goods every day to different customers in the inner city of Hamburg. We are looking forward to seeing how the electric truck performs with the high demands of refrigerated logistics.”

Oliver Kraft, head of Key Account Management at Mercedes-Benz Trucks: “We are delighted that the Nagel-Group with their many years of experience in food logistics is one of our customers testing the eActros in daily operations. This vehicle for the Nagel-Group rounds off our ‘Innovation Fleet’ for testing the all-electric truck.”

As part of practical testing of the eActros “Innovation Fleet”, the 18 or 25-tonne vehicles are operated by 20 fleets from various sectors as part of regular daily operations. The tests of this “Innovation Fleet” are made up of two phases, each with 10 customers. Feedback from these practical tests goes into further development of the eActros right up until its readiness for series production.

The eActros is based on the frame of the Mercedes-Benz Actros. However, the vehicle’s architecture has been designed around an electric drive system and thus features a high percentage of vehicle-specific components. Two electric motors near the wheel hubs of the rear axle provide the drive, each delivering an output of 126 kW and 485 Nm maximum torque. Furthermore, the transmission ratio used sees this brought up to 11,000 Nm on each wheel. The drive power is therefore on par with a conventional truck, Daimler said. Lithium-ion batteries with 240 kWh capacity provide the eActros with the required energy. Depending on the available charging output, the batteries can be charged completely within two hours (at 150 kW).

The development and testing of the heavy-duty electric truckin short-radius distribution operations is sponsored as part of the”Concept ELV²” project to varying degrees by the German FederalMinistry for the Environment (BMUB) and the Federal Ministry for EconomicAffairs and Energy (BMWi).